So as I’m looking back on tonight’s class, it went pretty well in the sense that we managed to do the big things that we wanted to do:give an overview of the field and start to get comfortable with the overall goals of the course.
In a course like this one, it’s hard to know where we are, which is why we ended the class with just a question and answer session. Gave us time to wind down and gave me a sense of where you were with your thinking.
We’ll revisit what you wrote down about wanting to learn in the penultimate class meeting to see how we did. This is one way of closing the loop and connecting back to things that went on previously, which is a good strategy for  helping students connect the dots.
Tonight, we just had to lay some groundwork that gave you a sense of TPC historically from both the academic and the practitioner standpoint. Next week, I hope that you’ll see how the “foundations” intersect with some of the history and definitions, but you should also be prepared to start making your own leaps about teaching. But I appreciated your questions that questioned the definitions and started to tease out some of the contradictions. I’ve answered some of your questions to also help recap the class.
I realized that we didn’t get to two of the combined questions (from Spencer and Jess and from Josh, Kara, and Drew). We will be using those next week to actually jumpstart our discussion.
If I had to pare down one thing for you to takeaway from tonight and the readings is that like any field TPC is still working on defining the boundaries of knowledge, but it is and has always been focused on communicating information (let’s call it technical if you want) to a specific audience for a specific purpose. What distinguishes it from other types of writing is in its aims. It’s all about some action.
The one takeaway from learning how to teach is stand up straight and deliver information with confidence. 🙂
I appreciate your attention and your participation, but know that in the future, you’ll be talking much more.